U.S. Pat. No. 4,143,282, issued Mar. 6, 1979 in the name of Berard, Jr., et al., describes a bilateral or bidirectional power converter described as being for use in a spacecraft application, in which a common inductor is switched under the control of a pulse-width modulator, so as to operate in a buck mode when coupling power from a high-voltage electrical source to a low-voltage electrical source, and to operate in a boost mode when coupling power from the low-voltage source to the high-voltage source. The increasingly stringent power requirements being placed upon spacecraft, in conjunction with reliability and cost considerations, makes it imperative to find some way to manifest a spacecraft power system which is at once inexpensive, and capable of operation at widely varying load levels on different spacecraft.